Importance: For much of his life, Quentin has dreamed of living in a place like Fillory, being a king, and aspiring to heroics. Now, what Quentin has long dreamed of doing has come true: he is a king, he does live in Fillory, and his next step is to become a hero.

Fillory was a darker and more dangerous place in real life than it was in the books. Bad things happened, there. Terrible things. People got hurt and killed and worse. -- Narrator
(Chapter 1 paragraph 27)

Importance: Although Fillory is a dreamlike world of magic, that doesn’t mean it isn’t susceptible to danger or evil. Evil exists in every place in every corner of every world, and this is a hard lesson that Quentin and the others learned in the previous book – and continue to learn in the present book. This is important because, once again, bad things are...